‘But it’s the Other Way’: How Things go Wrong, Why Thing Suck and A Foreshadowed Rescue (Gen 3)

art from here

Talk MP3

Note: The talk I ended up giving differed significantly from this manuscript, to the point that the title changed. But I am posting this because I think there is some valuable stuff in here that got cut.

There are a number of things that make me odd…but one of them is that I love to fly. I had to travel a lot for work this summer, and found the days I spent on the plane to be among the summers most relaxing, productive and restful. So a good chunk of this talk was written on planes while I flew over the random rectangular states. I spent so much time thinking about this passage in my little window seat with my little tray table that I thought about calling tonight’s talk “Snakes on a Plane.” I was excited about the tag line:

“There are bleeping snakes on the bleeping campus”

But I actually knew what my title for this talk would be before I had written a word. There was a show several years ago called ‘The Wire[1]’ which was about the Baltimore Heroin scene. I am going to show you a clip. In this clip, Marlo Stanfield the newly undisputed king of the corners and just about the coldest dude you could imagine. Now Marlo just got taken by a smooth old dude in a high stakes poker game. He ends up in a convenient store to buy a bottle of water, and decides to exert a little power to remind himself that he is still the king:





In the next scene Marlo’s muscle disposes of the security guard’s body.

I remember seeing this and thinking, “That is the story of Genesis 3.” Marlo just explained Act 2 of the gospel narrative as well as I have heard it explained.

“You want it to be one way…but it’s the other way.”

Marlo’s assessment of reality resonates with our own empirical assessment. For some reason, we feel like the world should be one way…but it’s the other way. We desperately want to live in a world where children aren’t orphaned by AIDS and the mentally ill don’t sleep under bridges and a few self interested institutions can’t topple the world’s economic system and come out of it rich…but it’s the other way.

And even in our little worlds, we want to live in a world where upper level mathematics is tractable, and parents are still deeply in love[2] and boyfriends don’t cheat and there are plenty of good jobs when you graduate and professors use just, non-arbitrary criteria to evaluate you and, I don’t know, maybe just once a College Life speaker would go short…but it’s the other way.[3] Marlo’s right. The question is why.

Genesis 3 claims to answer this question.

But, the interesting thing about Genesis 3 is that it actually addresses this question in several ways. There are at least three ways the church has historically interpreted this text. First have looked to it as essentially a manual to understand and survive temptation – to personally negotiate the brokenness in our world. Second, we have read it as the Act 2 in the cosmic narrative of creation-fall-redemption; the big answer to the question ‘why isn’t anything the way it is supposed to be’. And finally, we have seen in it the foreshadowing of God’s solution to the problem the passage itself explains. You see, Genesis 3 is a multi-scale story. It has personal, cosmic and temporal scales which tell us (respectively): How things go wrong, Why things suck, and a foreshadowed rescue. So let’s take those in order:

1. Personal Scale: How things go wrong.

The first answer to the question of why things are not the way they are supposed to be is you…and me. We are supposed to see ourselves in this story. The story of how Adam and Eve fall is the story of how we fall.

“Genesis is not a story of what happened, it is a story of what always happens.” Mark Driscoll

“When we read Genesis 3 we find the same dynamics of temptation and disobedience as we ourselves experience.” John Goldengay

And so, this passage has historically been read as a temptation survival guide.

Now, survival guides have been pretty popular recently.



This one for example, includes such useful tips as: I am trying to get a hold of the zombie survival guide and glean a couple fun tips from it.



But the first fourteen verses of Genesis 3 is a survival guide you can actually use against an enemy that actually exists and regularly kicks the crap out of you like the second grade bully who waited for me every day at my locker. So let’s briefly look at 5 insights for surviving temptation from the first thirteen verses.

A Temptation Survival Guide

1. Don’t Underestimate Your Enemy: “the serpent was more crafty”

The passage starts out by introducing us to a cryptic enemy[4] and does not linger to identify it. But in the first 6 words we learn 4 important things. 1) God has enemies. 2) Their aggression against God is waged through people. 3) They are not in God’s league. 4) We are not in their league.

By depicting God’s enemy as a serpent, the most earthly[5] of his motile creatures, the passage is intentionally opposing dualism, the idea that we are in a situation where good and evil are embattled and have roughly equal power. God’s enemy is just another created thing…and has to resort to guerilla warfare against the other things God made in order to do any damage. God’s enemies are not in his league. But by saying that ‘the serpent was more crafty’ it suggests that we are not in its league. God’s enemy is terrified of God, but is clever enough that we must not underestimate it.

So, my job often takes me places where my employer feels there is a kidnapping risk. In the last few years I have been to Kabul, Kenya, Paraguay and Guyana. And before each trip, I have to take “kidnapping training.” Now ‘kidnapping training’ is not nearly as cool as it sounds. It is not training on how to kidnap people or training on how to rescue people who have been kidnapped….it is training on how to survive being kidnapped. The training starts with the assumption that you have a bag over your head.

Anyway, what I have always found most interesting about this training is the part about being interrogated. They tell us that the interrogator has every advantage. He is eating well, getting sleep, is not fearful for his safety and generally has a lot of experience interrogating. He is likely really, really good at his job. What they tell you is to not to try to outsmart him. You won’t win. It is just stacked against you. We were told ‘Interrogation is not a battle of wits…it is a battle of wills.’ Don’t underestimate your enemy…and don’t get pulled into his games. But have a plan in place to resist him.

And I thought of this as I read in the first words of this chapter how clever God’s enemy is. Don’t underestimate the enemy, don’t get pulled into its games and have a resistance plan in place.

But, the serpent is an intentionally ambiguous figure.[6] Historically the church has believed that it was the devil, but by using this cryptic creature as the tempter it could stand in for any of God’s enemies, either the chief cosmic tempter, subordinate cosmic tempters, or anyone really who set themselves against God…including us.

The identity of the tempter is left a little ambiguous so we could see in its place any voice that asks us ‘Did God Really Say?’ Because some temptation is cosmic and some is very earthy. The serpent can stand in for anyone who asks you ‘did God really say?’ Anyone who says ‘come on, you don’t really believe that? ‘That’s just goofy.’ ‘Surely you won’t die.’ ‘Surely God wants you to be happy and successful, so he can’t be serious about all those restrictions.’ Which leads me to the second page of the temptation survival guide:

2. Temptation is fundamentally an assault on God’s truthfulness and generosity
“Did God actually say?”

Genesis 3 rests on the command in Genesis 2 where God said “You may surely eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” And the tempter uses a two pronged offensive against this command…first he questions its veracity…temptation calls God’s truthfulness into question:

“Did God really say?”
And this should sound familiar to you…because every day on this campus, there are voices saying to you “did God really say?” But this was just the first step in a two stage assault. The tempter followed up questioning God’s truthfulness by questioning his generosity.

Now, the most obvious thing that emerges from a casual acquaintance of the command is that there is a dramatic asymmetry between God’s permission and prohibition. There is WAY more permission than prohibition. If you look at this command and find it somehow ungenerous, it says more about you than it does about God.

But the genius of the tempter is to convince the humans that God hid all the best stuff[7] is not in the plentiful permissions but in the single prohibition.[8] Questioning God’s truthfulness laid the groundwork…but the real temptation emerged from getting the humans to question God’s generosity.

But then something really interesting happens. Eve plays along. In verse 1 the serpent makes God more restrictive than he actually is. And then in verse 3 Eve does the same, relating God’s restriction with an additional limitation. This is the first recorded act of ‘legalism’ – which is adding arbitrary human rules to God’s protective boundaries. But here is the thing we see. Legalism is complicit with temptation…because it aids and abeds the lie that God is not generous.[9] (This is one of my favorite ideas of the talk – it used to be its own point - but I could cut it if it is a distraction)

But as I said a couple weeks ago…it turns out that God’s prohibitions are as generous as God’s permissions. God wants us to know the difference between good and evil without having to experience the evil. By trusting that God is truthful and his generous we gut temptation of its power.

You see, the serpent told a kind of half truth – their eyes were opened…their eyes were open to horrible horrible things.

Every once in a while a clip shows up on Youtube. It is a famous cartoon that is designed to get parents to show the clip to their kids while they do dishes or pay a couple bills. The cartoon plays for a little while, but then, a few minutes in, it suddenly switches to a grotesque and terrifying scene from a horror film. It moves without warning from elmo to chuckie. Sin’s promise of meaning or adventure carries a payload of fear and shame.

This was what Adam and Eve experienced. One commentator called their experience ‘a grotesque anticlimax to the dream of enlightenment.’ They got the sophistication they craved, but it came with a payload of fear and shame. Which leads to the third insight…

3. Temptation Specializes in False Advertizing 10-11

Plantinga “People do sometimes rebel literally for the hell of it, but this is rare. Usually they are after peace of mind, security, pleasure…freedom, excitement. Evil wants good…” 90

Walton – “Adam and Eve accept something illicit because they have been persuaded that it is for their own good…Temptation is most effective when it dangles something before us that can be easily interpreted as good.” 213

Temptation specializes in false advertising. Most people want the true the good and the beautiful. We are wired to long for these things and rarely, initially chase evil or self destruction for its own sake.

The serpent promised wisdom, insight and sophistication.[10] And what was it that finally drew the humans in? It was the commoditization of insight. “she saw that..the tree was desired to make one wise.” Now, we know Wisdom is valuable, how could this be a corrupt motivation. But she didn’t want wisdom…she wanted to be wise. That is a huge difference. We do a lot of crap to e perceived as smart. A lot of people reject the faith because they don’t think they can love Jesus and be perceived as intelligent. Jesus following is insufficiently sophisticated.

The fall out was fear[11], shame, and a loss of spiritual intimacy and it still is. Their rebellion turned them on God and each other…it made them see God and their lovers as the enemies[12]. The worst that sin does is not making people bad but making God distant and fragments relationships.[13]

While fear and shame are devastating payloads that sin sneaks into our lives attached to something we thought would be good…by far the most devastating impact of sin is diminishing intimacy with God. Adam and Eve shrink from his presence[14]…and we have been that way ever since.

So your temptation survival guide has to include the recognition that sin specializes in false advertising. And that is a truly counter-cultural assertion. We have been led to believe that the good is safe but dull while rebellion is risky, but stimulating, engaging and fun. But temptations great lie is that the good is boring and evil is exciting.

“Nothing is so beautiful and wonderful, nothing is so continually fresh and surprising, so full of sweet and perpetual ecstasy, as the good. No desert is so dreary, monotonous, and boring as evil.[15] This is the truth about authentic good and evil…With fictional good and evil it is the other way round. Fictional good is boring and flat, while fictional evil is varied and intriguing, attractive profound, and full of charm.” - Simone Weil On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God

4 Keep Repentance Drawn and Blame Holstered[16]

Both the man and woman blame shift when God comes on the scene. One of the central ideas in the Christian theology of human falleness is that, not only do we tend to act in self interested, God dishonoring ways…we tend to convince ourselves that we are not culpable. No one sees their own sin clearly.

“Clashing perspectives give rise to a glaring incongruity: in a world so manifestly drenched with evil everybody is innocent in their own eyes…Yet all know and agree that somebody must be guilty; somebody’s eyes must be deceiving them badly. But whose eyes?” (79) Volf EAE

The Genesis 3 answer is yes. Your eyes are deceiving you and my eyes are deceiving me. The world is this way because we are this way.

GK Chesteton is said to have written a letter[17] wrote a letter to the editor to a periodical that ran an article titled “what is wrotng with the world”. He letter was brief:

“Dear Sirs,
Regarding your article ‘What is wrong with the world?’
I am.
Yours Truly, GK Chesterton”

I thought of this idea when this image showed up on my facebook feed[18] last week:

The Christian story, including Genesis 3, includes the unsettling but deeply helpful insight that the problem with the world isn’t ‘out there’…it is ‘in here’. The Christian call to make repentance rather than blame our first impulse is based on the radical insight that it our eyes that deceive us badly.

Just like our spiritual parents, we are self justifying creatures and generally bear more fault than we own.

And so, one of the insights in the ‘Temptation Survival Guide’ is to “Keep Repentance Drawn and Blame Holstered.”

Make a parallel between an asset and a liability in fighting zombies. Something like, Repentance is your sawed off and blame is human attachment. That doesn’t work, but you get the idea. Maybe just a pic of a famous zombie hunter with a sawed off brandished (labeled repentance) and a holstered side arm (labeled blame).




5 God is Still There to Walk You Through the Mess[19]

So shame and fear work their way into this beautiful picture of human flourishing…and it is ruined. And Adam and Eve try to deal. They try to patch up the mess. They make themselves these pathetic little cloths out of the biggest leaves[20] they could find. And then God shows up. And he asks a couple questions, drawing them out of their hiding. But there is no going back.[21]

Miroslov Volf argues that one of the horrors of our condition (and one of the reasons that the gospel is the best paradigm for negotiating it) is that so many of our actions are tragically permanent. It is impossible to undo so many of our simple acts of destruction.

God looks at their sad little attempts to mitigate the situation…and he loves them.[22] He knows the difficulty of the harsh reality that they unleashed upon themselves and knows that their sad little coverings will not cut it. They knew that they needed cover…but God knew their solution was absurdly thin. They had lost innocence but had not become wise enough to actually survive.
And so he makes them cloths to cover their shame and protect them in their stark, terrifying new reality. They have staged a rebellion. And God responds with care.[23] God is still there to walk them through the mess. God is already providing comfort even as he is handing them over to the consequences of their rebellion – it is a picture of grace and care and a foreshadowing that this is not the end of the story.

And so on the personal scale, we can mine this story for a survival guide for dealing with temptation. But there is a bigger scale with which Christians have historically read this passage. It answers the bigger question:

2. Cosmic Scale – Why Things Suck – verses 14-24

The story of Adam and Eve teaches more than how to negotiate our own psychological and spiritual conflict with temptation. The story upscales…it also tells how your struggle exists within the context of the cosmic story of salvation history. You see our spiritual parents bought a very simple lie: You don’t need a god…you can be god. And this has been the fundamental problem ever since. Every violence, every injustice, every indignity that one person has done to another or to the world God has made is a microcosm of this big lie…that we can come up with a better way to do this thing. This deception propagates from generation to generation leaving us in this new broken reality. (yes, I am totally dodging the theological question of imputed tendency vs imputed guilt. Call me a chicken, but I don’t have the time…and I go back and forth on it myself.) It is the reason why, Marlo could glower at that security guard and tell him…’it’s the other way.’ Because things are not the way they are supposed to be.

In verses 14-24, God reads humans into the new reality. We often call this ‘the curse’ but humans are not actually cursed in this passage. God is simply letting us know how things go when we assert our autonomy from our creator. Genesis 3 begins the second act of a 3 act play of creation-fall-redemption

It is the story of a cosmic rift in our relatedness with God and each other that echoes through each generation, into ours, and will echo into our children’s generation.

Both our work[24] and our closest relationships (romantic and parental[25]) get difficult and complicated – not because God has ‘cursed’ us but because we have lost the capacity for contentment in the vortex of our self centerdness – by supplanting God as the ultimate end we have evacuated our relationships and work of their meaning. Work becomes toilsome, raising children becomes heart breaking[26] and relationships accrue a dark degrading shadow.

There is a lot we could draw out of this passage…but let’s look at just one really tragic verse. God says to the woman “Towards your man will be your desire, but he – he is to rule over you.” John Goldengay says “These are some of the most poignant, sad words in Scripture.”[27] [28]Romantic relationships are scarred – in these few sentences we see that this cosmic tear allowed the exertion of power and unrequited longing to enter into our romantic relationships – which is at the root of most of our relational brokenness. God is not ‘cursing’ them. He is laying out the implications of their new mode of self reliant existence.

And most of our attempts to fix it have just made it worse because they are just advanced forms of the same error of self reliance, self rule and self worship:
http://xkcd.com/592/
Xkcd comic (not sure if a funny turn works here – and I am at a all time high for editing expletives in this talk already – but it would be an easy edit)

Our experience is marred by cosmic disappointment. The girl you want doesn’t want you…or maybe she does, and it turns out that you just weren’t that into her. The guy you hoped was the one treated you like crap. A relationship that was promising turned degrading.

This is why the most important thing you can look for in someone to date and marry is someone accomplished at ‘repenting’ and ‘forgiving’ because those are the currency of our relatedness. Whoever you connect with will eventually hurt you and you will hurt them. That is our state. We can only mitigate it with repentance and forgiveness. And the church has historically pointed to these events, which we have called the fall, and which echo throughout every succedding generation, and held them up as the answer to the question ‘why things suck.’ This is why ‘it’s the other way.’[29]

“Human nature, indeed, was created at first faultless and sinless; but that human nature in which every one is born from Adam, now needs the physician, because it is not sound. All good qualities, no doubt, which it still possesses in its constitution, life, senses, and intellect, it has from the Most High God, its Creator and Maker. But the flaw…darkens and weakens all those natural goods, so that (we have) need of illumination and healing…” Augustine – On the Nature of Grace

Total depravity does not mean that we are as bad as we could be – that is, obviously, empirically false.
The ‘Total’ in the phrase total depravity is not a word of intensity but of scope. We are not as bad as we could be…but everything aspect of our being that was created good in God’s image, is tainted. Our capacity for beauty justice and truth all still exist…but they are all distorted…so we can be easily deceived into thinking that something degrading is actually beautiful or that something oppressive is actually just or that something deceptive is actually true.

So if all of our capacities are distorted, if self destructive self centeredness and self reliance are our inheritance from our spiritual parents…how do we negotiate it?

Well, as always…grace breaks in.

Genesis 3, the beginning of Act 2 of the creation-fall-redemption story includes an epic foreshadowing of Act 3, of God’s story. Which leads us to:

3. Temporal Scale (Conclusion) – Foreshadowing the Solution (The Christological Turn) - v 3:15

You see here is the thing…even in the statement of the problem, Got plants the seeds of the story of redemption. Act 1 foreshadowed Act 2 (with the mention of the trees) – and with a brief mention of the defeat of God’s enemy, Act 2[30] foreshadows Act 3.[31]

When God turns to the serpent in verse 15 he says

15”I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel."

He foreshadowed the solution before he is even done describing the problem. Historically, Christians have seen in this verse, the seeds of the entire story…an epic foreshadowing of the entire narrative. Humans would live at odds with each other and a malevolent cosmic force until a special human child will take it on and bring down this enemy at huge personal cost. “He will crush your head and you will strike his heal…hope breaking through the despair. And this verse always reminds me…of course…of the Honey Badger…

At over 19 millions views you have probably seen the Honey Badger clip. I know some of you have (water polo pic). If not, well, you might just have an actual life. But if you have seen this you both know why I have to narrate it myself and why it will be a disappointing substitute for the skilled narration of the actual clip.






That’s right, in this illustration, the Honey Badger is Jesus. The story of the cross and the empty tomb is that a cosmic champion in mortal personhood plays out this script from Genesis 3:15. Jesus takes down the serpent but is mortally wounded in the process. He wounds its head but it wounds his heal.

The days that passed between the cross and the resurrection are like the moments in the video where our hero, the Honey Badger, is overcome by the snake bite. In those seeming interminable clicks of the YouTube clock, his bravery looks like foolishness. We don’t have the data to do the toxicology in our heads but we know that the King Cobra is mythically deadly. Surely the Honey Badger could not survive that. The first time I watched this clip, I mourned the protagonist in those moments, sure he was dead. But he knows something about being a Honey Badger that we don’t. He is actually far more bad ass than we ever guessed.

The Honey Badger’s fearlessness (he really doesn’t give a bleep) is motivated by appropriate confidence that the serpent mortal bite can only inflict a fleeting death…that he will emerge the victor and that the cost is worth the prize.

And that is the story of the gospel. Jesus lets the serpent bite him instead of us…he takes on the penalty of Adam and Eve’s rebellion and ours…because he can take it. He can emerge on the other side of death and wrap up his victory over the decimated serpent.

Even while the first humans stared into the dark, degrading consequences of their rebellion, God was telling them, I will send a champion, who will undo the irreversible.[32] I will win you back.

Col 2:15 – “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in the cross.”

Rom 16:20 – “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.”[33]

So Genesis 3 tells us how things go wrong, and why things suck, but more importantly it also forshadows a rescue from the predicament. The victory Jesus brings over God’s enemy and our brokenness will be finally experienced in the next age, but at the heart of the gospel is the idea that you can switch teams now, from the serpent to the badger. From the enemy to the champion. And when God wins the final victory over his enemies, even though you and I are among them, he finds us on the Jesus team.

_______________
[1] A show I cannot remotely endorse from the pulpit…but happens to be the best television content in the history of the medium.
[2] Or Don’t fight or are still together
[3] A couple decades ago Cornelius Planting wrote what has become the most famous contemporary work on ‘sin’ – which he titled “Not the Way its Supposed to Be.”
[4] Walton – “The text brings the serpent on the scene with little introduction and no strategic identification.”
[5] There is nothing supernatural in appearance or approach about the tempter – it is totally mundane…apart from the fact that the snake is chatty (which hasn’t been my experience with reptiles), the tempter is totally unremarkable. Goldengay: “Genesis emphasizes the nonsupernatural, earthly character of the tempter, one of the wild creatures that God made.” Though it is worth noting that: “Throughout the ancient world, [the serpent] was endowed with divine or semi divine qualities; it was venerated as an emblem of health, fertility, immortality, occult wisdom, and chaotic evil; and it was often worshiped. The serpent played a significant role in the mythology, religious symbolism, and the cults of the ancient near east.” Walton 203
[6] Genesis 3 is about as interested in telling us where evil came from as Genesis 1 is interested in telling us where DNA came from. They are Acts 1 and 2 in the Jesus story.
[7] “the woman saw” she reinterprets the visual evidence in light of the serpent’s suggestion that God is neither trustworthy or generous - Note: the tree is useful and beautiful…just like the other trees that God generously provided in 1:9 (the same phrase is used)
[8] Goldengay: “In its shrewdness, the snake begins by making God much more restrictive and much less generous than God was. The story has emphasized the plentiful nature of God’s provision and the single constraint. The snake makes it all constraint….The snake comes back immediately for round two, questioning God’s goodwill and generosity in a more radical fashion…(suggesting that) it was jealousy that made God deny people access to the good-and-bad-knowledge tree.”
[9] There is a religious impulse that some thinkers call the principle of ‘magnification.’ The idea is that if one rule is good two are better. Because his prohibitions are generous protections, and not the rules of a game in which we gain brownie points for a final count up to see if we earn his love… that’s not the way God’s law works - if one rule is good one rule is good.
[10] Kidner – “The man and the woman have been sold a false idea of evil, as something beyond good; of wisdom, as sophistication; and now of greatnesses, as greed.” – Eve despises her innocence and wants to trade it for grown up sophistication – but it turns out that ‘grown up sophistication’ is just the façade of despair erected over the loss of innocence.
[11] Goldengay “But we were never supposed to be afraid of the one who wants to go for a walk with us.”
[12] Kidner “To be as God, and to achieve it by outwitting him, is an intoxicating program. God will henceforth be regarded, consciously or not, as a rival and enemy”
[13] We tend to think of sin psychologically – how it affects us…the Israelite perspective is how sin affects God – it defiles his presence and prevents us from access to him – it does not change him, but dishonors him - Walton
[14] Dan and I see it all the time, CL leaders get entangled in sin, and it diminishes their productivity
[15] Walton – “Any independence we experience is fleeting as old dependencies are simply replaced with new ones.” – Genesis 3 is the story of the search for independence from the creator of 1 and 2 - The failure of autonomy to deliver has led to the cultural shift to postmodernism and the re-comttment to community
[16] “Keep your trigger finger on repentance and the safety lock on blame.”
Our Fist Impulse is Blame Instead of Repentance
[17] There is no citation of this, though it has been widely circulate…but it has not been debunked as urban legand.
[18] Incidentally, ‘Ride a Bike Around’ is another indispensible piece of advice from the Zombie Survival Guide which the characters in John Green’s ‘Zombiecorns’ seem to think is silly.
[19] Temptation’s Fallout is Characterized by Permanence AND Grace
Sin Has Consequences, But God Cares for us Through Them
Even when we push God away, he isn’t going anywhere
[20] “The fig leaves were pathetic enough, as human expedients tend to be, but the instinct was sound and God confirmed it, for sin’s proper fruit is shame.” Kidner
[21] There was a scene in the last season of Mad Men where Peggy and another creative are sequestered to a hotel room to come up with an idea for an account. The dude talks about how all our social equiptment to make us feel shame about being naked is just BS and we should all be freer and more comforatable with our body. Peggy calls his bluff. Nakedness is never innocent in sexualized adults. No matter how many people assert that the shame surrounding nakedness is a social construct that we should transcend…there is no going back.
[22] It’s cool, we got this…um, no you don’t.
[23] v22 – having fallen, God restricts the availability of eternal life because it is no longer a gift…but a curse. It becomes available again after we can handle it. (Rev)
[24] The same anxiety and frustration you have with your studies will eventually come from your work and, even more so, from your children.
[25] This is why, when we start the winter quarter out with a relationship series, we are going to do 3 parts: Friendships, Family and Romance…because the scars of our brokenness go deep into what makes each of these complicated.
[26] The commentators have a TON to say about this. It is all very compelling…but just not the best conent for a community of college students. Here are a few thoughts on it anyway:
Pain in childbirth – agony, wory, nuisance, anxiety all have the same root – not typically used for physical pain but mental and psychological anguish – and the reference is not to delivery but conception- Walton 227 – sex is complicated, but for many, so is getting pregnant – same word used for the toilsome nature of work
The ‘pain of bearing children’ – not just the physical pain of the act but the turmoil of raising children that reflect your broken image – we distort the image of God in us, and they reflect that distorted image
Same word ‘toil/sorrow/travail’ used for the woman and the man for his work and her labor
-“conception anxiety” – it creates an image that we will see again and again in Genesis – of a couple who wants children but cannot have them…but I suspect on this campus “conception anxiety” means something entirely different (could use a condom advert)
-family relationships will be complicated, painful and anxiety riddled from conception to adulthood
[27] ‘desire will be for your husband’ – the principle of lesser interest – “In a relationship involving two partners, the one with the greater need of the other is more vulnerable, while the one with the lesser interest in the relationship is in the position of dominance.” – Walton 228 – note male domination is default in the cosmic violence to the good that emerges from self worship
[28] I kind of want to do something like, “a lot of the things you learned in Women’s Studies are true…and God knows and cares.”
[29] Walton – “The purpose of this section of the text is to explain how humanity, corporately and individually, came to be outsiders and lost access to God’s presence. Israelites understood that it was not supposed to be that way.” 232
[30] I feel like there has to be a scene in Empire Strikes Back, a fundamentally depressing movie, that indicates that victory will be attained – something like “he’s our only hope. No there is another.” But better.
[31] The next few chapters – a total s&$# storm – narrative exposition on how this plays out – But then Act 3 begins with Abraham
[32] In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when Aslan emerges from death, he says:
“Though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward."
[33] ‘take and eat’ – echoed in the Lord’s supper – kidner, I never saw that ‘take and eat become verbs of salvation’